You’re in a new city. It’s 2 PM and you need a snack before your 2:30 appointment. Marketers at Starbucks know where you are, what you like to drink and eat, and that its coffeehouse around the corner has just one person in line. That soft ding is a tailored text message with a Starbucks coupon, giving you a nudge to stop in. To achieve this highly personalized communication, Starbucks collects data on its customers’ demographics, their payments and transactions, their beverage preferences and more. Using geolocation technology, its mobile application targets users with personalized messages. Loyalty program members might get time-limited coupons, which help Starbucks raise store utilization during nonpeak periods. More than one-ﬁfth of the chain’s in-store purchases in the US now [...]

Individual investors increasingly are looking for alternatives to the wealth management model that relies heavily on engaging clients in person. Many people want a more flexible way to manage their investments, which combines sophisticated, easy-to-use digital tools with a human touch when it really matters. Regulators have also been putting pressure on conventional commission-based models, eroding the economics of many traditional wealth management businesses. Consumers’ appetites for alternative models, combined with powerful new software, have opened the door to a wave of “robo-adviser” start-ups, such as Betterment, Personal Capital and Wealthfront. These firms rely on automated computer algorithms to allocate, deploy and rebalance investments. They make it easy to open an account, and their active reporting not only helps people understand their financial positions but [...]

On the face of it, Southeast Asia would seem like an e-commerce wonderland. No place on Earth matches this region in digital adoption. The people in the Philippines send more texts than any other country. Jakarta is the world’s No. 1 city for tweets. Indeed, Southeast Asia’s population of 620 million may be diverse, but its inhabitants have one important thing in common: an eagerness to use mobile technology. The region is home to more than 250 million smartphone users. Then why is it that only one in four consumers over the age of 16 in the region has ever made an online purchase? And what will it take to help Southeast Asia reach its vast potential for digital commerce? To get a clear picture [...]

Grocers, mass merchants, fast-food restaurant chains and other retailers that sell to consumers are increasingly implementing third-party pricing software. Vendors such as Clear Demand, DemandTec (an IBM company) and Revionics provide tools that can be highly effective, particularly in high-SKU and high-volume operations. Companies use these software programs to establish price points that fit their strategy, maintain pricing accuracy as the competitive landscape and vendors change, and make their pricing processes more efficient and effective. Companies can also use pricing tools to assess consumer elasticity and thereby optimize prices. The benefits that accrue range from 1% to 3% of gross margin dollar improvement. Yet the extent of the benefits depends on how carefully companies select, adopt and use the tools. Many different outcomes are possible, [...]

Forget Mad Men. Today’s marketers are more likely to be math men and women. They plumb the depths of Big Data with advanced analytical tools. They buy and use dazzling new software—some spend more on technology in a given year than their companies’ IT departments. They are hot on the trail of marketing’s holy grail, the ability to measure return on investment (ROI) on every campaign. These are laudable pursuits, up to a point. The trouble comes when marketers mistake the algorithm for the person. Humans, after all, are pesky creatures. We make decisions with our hearts as well as our heads. Our wants and needs can’t always be reduced to, or predicted by, data. Great marketers have always known this, which is why they [...]

Join in4mation insights and Bain & Company for a one-day conference that will explore the ways leading companies use analytics and marketing to strengthen their businesses. We will discuss new techniques and practical examples, drawing on the knowledge of industry experts. Arcature CEO Larry Light, our keynote speaker, will discuss a new analytic approach for evaluating brand marketing. Other speakers include eye tracking technology and consumer science expert Michel Wedel and P.K. Kannan, a scholar in digital attribution modeling and media mix modeling. Wedel and Kannan are professors at the University of Maryland. Experts from in4mation insights and Bain & Company will also share their insights. There is no cost to attend. Where: Bain & Company's offices, 131 Dartmouth Street, Boston, MA When: Thursday, April 28th 8 AM-4 PM Please contact Janet [...]

This piece originally appeared on HBR.org. The chief marketing officer at a major technology provider recently voiced concerns that I’ve heard from several other CMOs: “Our customers have gotten way ahead of our sales efforts. Too often, we’re not even getting invited to the dance.” This tech company’s website, like many others, overflows with information about product features but offers few perspectives about how the products truly solve customers’ problems. It’s a common issue in B2B markets. The wealth of information available online for prospective customers has effectively uncoupled buying cycles from selling cycles. This is a terrifying development for B2B firms, and especially for their sales and marketing teams. Bain & Company recently surveyed 370 sales and marketing executives of large technology or industrial companies. [...]

We’re all suffering from a little data overload these days. Most data collection services on the market offer analytics tools that promise to uncover new patterns in customer behavior, with all the spreadsheets a nerd could hope for. Finally, you can see what your customers are doing right now—and in numbers. But how often do people actually do that? More often than not, that data just amounts to more Excel spreadsheets or daily reports that clutter up your inbox. Companies are getting data from so many sources that it’s impossible to pull it all together in any coherent way. The most data-savvy companies have started to bring their data streams together into a single, overall view of each customer. My colleagues Laura Beaudin and Mark [...]

Who are millennials and what do they want? The answer depends on whom you ask. Some companies consider millennials entitled, self-absorbed hipsters who flit from one app to another, satisfying their immediate needs with a tap and swipe. Others consider them the gateway to new ways of thinking, living and buying. Wooing millennials has been particularly vexing in fashion, where high-end retailers are trying (and often failing) to court a generation that came of age during financially turbulent times. Millennials hold on to their money, favoring cheaper “fast fashion” labels such as H&M and Zara. But one luxury company has proven that millennials will part with hundreds (even thousands) of dollars if the customer experience is right: Burberry. The British fashion house, famous for its iconic plaid, [...]